Allowance to pay less than dole

Stephanie Peatling, James Robertson

WHILE trying to survive on a little more than $10 a day, an asylum seeker was handed 48 hours notice of eviction.

The man, who lived on a bridging visa for three years, said he was told on a Friday to leave his boarding house in Sydney's inner west by the Sunday, after complaining about exposed wires in the bathroom.

''They feel they can kick you out at any time,'' said the man, who asked not to be named.

Unable to work, he kept busy through volunteer work and relied on free meals from Sydney's Asylum Seekers Centre.

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''Many of us feel lonely, useless and depressed,'' he said.

Other asylum seekers are at risk of homelessness because of the meagre level of assistance offered to them by the federal government.

''They will sleep under bridges,'' the director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, Aloysius Mowe, said. ''If they have a minimum amount of money they will go into boarding houses where you sleep eight people to a room; that's a reality of housing for the disadvantaged in NSW.''

The government's new arrangements for asylum seekers will see people living for up to five years on bridging visas which ban them from working.

They will be expected to live on welfare payments of $438 a fortnight - less than the dole - with a small stipend for accommodation assistance.

The Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, describes it as ''not generous but appropriate''.

''We're talking about less than $30 a day to pay for everything [including rent],'' the national director of UnitingCare Australia, Lin Hatfield Dodds, said. ''They won't be able to afford to live.''